296 Week 8: Faraday’s Law and Induction
for the few, but for every person on the planet. The Sun, the windand the water can provide us with
power for as long as the Sun shines (some five billion more years), thewind blows (as long as the Sun
shines), the water flows (ditto). If we must burn fuels, thermonuclear fuels such as deuterium are so
abundant that they, too, are virtually inexhaustible – even if the Earth runs out in a billion years
or so, there is all of the rest of the solar system to mine. Burning oiland coal, however, is simply
inexcusible, except as a short time stopgap to keep civilization from collapsing while we change over
to renewable or inexhaustible resources.
But to make this changeover, we requirepolitical will. We have toinvestin the changeover, we
have tomandatethe changeover as a matter of socialwill. Until we have converted to renewable
energy, human civilization will hang by an ever eroding thread over anabyss of misery. On the other
hand, once we have convertedenergy scarcity will never again be an important social or economic
issueand indeed, the world economies can actually stabilize by using the more or less fixed value of
energy as a standard of monetary value. Nearly all scarcities in human affairs – water, food, living
space, clothing, commodities – can be provided cheaply given only enough, cheap enough, electricity.
It is my hope that my students over the years, reading these words, will be inspired to take action
and bring about the next great age of man, the unlimited energy age. But for you to have much
hope of being effective, you have tounderstandelectricity in a bit more detail than most people do.
Hopefully the next chapter will help you accomplish that understanding.